“As you should,” Hannah said. “Get a picture of that crazy nut and show it to people, ask questions, be nosy. Geez, do I have to tell you how to be a Fitzpatrick?”
“I’m on it,” Claire said. “Tell Maggie I won’t let you guys down.”
From the Pendleton paper website, Claire printed the photo of Diedre that Ed had submitted along with the article about her disappearance. Along with that, she took the directions and the list of yard sales from that day’s newspaper, and set off to investigate Diedre’s disappearance.
Claire first stopped at the post office, where Diedre’s sister, Sadie, worked.
“I was so sorry to hear about Diedre,” Claire said. “You must be worried sick.”
“My sister and I are not close,” Sadie said. “She couldn’t be bothered to help out when my husband got home from having open heart surgery and I still had to work full-time. I had to hire nurses to come sit with him while she sat on her bony ass in that filthy house of hers.”
“I’m so sorry,” Claire said. “Do you have any idea where she might have gone?”
“Not a clue,” Sadie said. “She only leaves home long enough to work at the hardware store a couple afternoons a week, or to hit every yard sale in the tri-state area.”
“Well, I hope she comes home soon so everyone can breathe easy.”
“She’s my sister, I mean, I don’t want anything bad to happen to her,” Sadie said. “I just can’t afford to take time off from work to look for her.”
Claire went to the flea market site out near the highway, found it closed, and then visited the three home addresses mentioned in the classifieds. No one recognized the photo until she came to the last address, out on Hollyhock Ridge. A large rental moving van was parked outside, and a harried-looking man and woman were loading their belongings into it. The woman gave Claire a list of what she had sold to Diedre, and described her station wagon.
“Her car was packed so full she had to put the treadle sewing machine on top. My husband helped her put it on the roof rack,” she said. “She would have needed someone to help her unload it.”
Claire drove back down Hollyhock Ridge, wondering what could have happened to Diedre between there and Rose Hill. Could she have missed a curve and gone over the hill at some point? Claire paid attention, but didn’t notice any guardrails missing or broken. After she got back to town and dropped the car off at home, she called Laurie and left a voicemail with what she’d found out, along with the woman’s name and phone number.
Back at Sean’s office, she could see Pip waiting outside.
“You need to give me a key,” he said.
“Not gonna happen,” she said.
Claire sat back down at her desk in Sean’s office and looked longingly through the window to outside, where the sun was shining in a cloudless blue sky.
She considered looking at clothes online, but reminded herself she was supposed to be conserving money and not spending it, at least until she had a new job. She went to one of her favorite celebrity gossip sites, where she was immediately assaulted with a photo of her ex-employer frolicking on a beach in an exotic locale, along with Claire’s ex-boyfriend, Carlysle. Claire quickly clicked off the site and exited the Internet.
Her head still ached, not only from the death-grip of her lingering hangover, but from hearing Pip bang away with a hammer in Sean’s office, where he was installing built-in book cases.
Her phone trilled that she had a text message, and it was from her make-up artist friend. It was just as Claire suspected; Eve was rumored to have had an affair with a married senator. The pregnancy wasn’t mentioned, but Eve had probably been able to hide it up until recently.
There was no doubt in Claire’s mind that Eve needed Ed to be the father in order to cover up that affair. Eve must have known about the pregnancy before she arranged to meet with Ed in Atlanta. Claire didn’t know anything about being pregnant, but she knew quite a bit about actresses faking pregnancies. Eve looked further along than four months. Too bad her mother was in Myrtle Beach; Claire would like to have a former nurse and mother look at Eve and give her opinion about how far along she actually was.
Now, how to get Eve to confess this to Ed?
She needed some serious think time.
Claire went to the front door and used a piece of scrap wood to wedge it open. Fresh air whirled through the open doorway and stirred the papers on the desk. Claire breathed in deeply and made an executive decision.
Ten minutes later she was sitting right outside the office at a small table she had carried out there, with Sean’s cordless office phone and an iced coffee from Little Bear Books. She gathered her hair up into a messy knot and shed the cardigan she wore over her sleeveless top, the better to feel the delicious breeze on her bare arms and neck. She closed her eyes behind her sunglasses, in preparation to have a good, long think.
A little while later, she heard a noise, and when she opened her eyes, Ed was standing there.
“Working hard?” he asked her.
Claire showed him the stack of Sean’s business cards on the table, weighted down with a rock. She offered him one, which he declined.
“Public relations, huh?”
“Mm hmm,” she replied.
“It looks more like basking in the sunshine,” he said. “Mind if I join you?”
Claire gestured with her hand to show that he was welcome. Ed went inside, carried out a chair, and sat down across from her.
The banging in the back of the office stopped, and then the whine of a circular saw could be heard.
“That Pip?” he asked.
“The one and only,” she replied.
“I was so caught up in my own drama this morning I forgot to ask, how are you?”
“At loose ends,” she said. “I haven’t been offered the Eldridge job, and this is only temporary until Sean comes back from the beach and hires someone permanent.”
“Melissa took secretarial training in prison,” he said. “She’d probably appreciate the opportunity.”
“We talked about that,” Claire said. “We all love Melissa but here’s the thing: he’s concerned about her grammar, which is atrocious, and he’s not sure how his clients would feel about her being an ex-con. She could work on the grammar, but the federal record is not going to go away.”
“Valid concerns,” Ed said. “I wish it wasn’t that way, but here we are.”
“Let me tell you what I did all day yesterday,” she said. “I had Cameron Crowe’s website open on one tab, where I could read his interviews with seventies rock stars, and I had a video website open on another tab, so I could watch performances of the music they talked about in the interviews.”
“Sounds like fun,” Ed said.
“And it was,” she said, “but that’s all I did all day long. I need to be working. I need a project, a challenge.”
“You’re like a bird dog that needs to hunt,” Ed said.
“I’m not sure I like that comparison,” Claire said.
“See, some dogs are bred to be active and hunt, and other dogs are bred to be companion animals and are more laid back. If you try to make a hunting dog be a house dog, he’ll go nuts, tear up the furniture, and chew the table legs. It frustrates him. If you try to make housedog hunt, it scares the hell out of him, and the first time he hears a gunshot he’ll run off and you’ll never see him again.”
“You’re not making it any better by elaborating,” Claire said. “Don’t you have any analogies where I’m a beautiful caged songbird or a brilliant, crime-solving cat?”
“Why don’t you write a book?” Ed said. “People seem to love tell-all books about celebrities.”
“Not gonna happen,” Claire said.
“I thought your confidentiality contract disappeared,” he said.
“I’ve thought about it,” she said. “There’s a literary agent who still calls to make offers. I like celebrity gossip as much as the next person, but it’s like eating junk food; I do
n’t always feel so good afterwards. I could write a book so salacious it would ruin careers and get a hit put out on me, but what would I have accomplished? I don’t want to look back on my life and have to face that kind of book as the biggest contribution I made to the world.”
“Well said.”
“I don’t know that teaching rich kids how to apply theater makeup is going to be all that worthwhile, but at least I’d be teaching someone how to do something constructive instead of destructive.”
“I hope it works out.”
“When do you start?”
“August first,” he said. “I’m a little nervous.”
“Oh, you’ll do fine,” Claire said. “You’re a born teacher and you love journalism.”
“A dying art,” he said. “I may as well teach them how to make the paper and ink.”
Pip came out, greeted Ed, and then lit up a joint.
“You can’t do that out here,” Claire said.
“All right, Mom,” Pip said.
He licked his fingers, pinched out the end he had just lit, and tucked it back into his bib overall pocket.
“I’ll see you later,” Ed said, and left.
Claire watched him go. A sitting duck, that man, too naïve for his own good. She hadn’t come up with a plan yet, but she wasn’t through thinking.
Pip took the seat Ed had just vacated. He reached for Claire’s cup so she scooped it out of his way.
“I just want a sip,” he said.
“Get your own,” she said.
“Can’t, I’m broke.”
“You’re always broke,” she said. “Stick with a job more than two minutes and you’ll have money.”
“Don’t lecture me, Claire,” he said. “We’re not married anymore.”
“And yet you still come to me with your hand out, expecting me to take care of you.”
“You owe me for that condo.”
“I paid every payment,” Claire said. “You saddled me with that ludicrous mortgage and then took off.”
“My name was on the deed.”
“You signed away your rights in the divorce settlement.”
“I didn’t read that thing. It was, like, a gazillion pages long.”
“And yet you signed it.”
“Ten bucks,” Pip said. “Please, Claire. I’ll pay you back as soon as Sean pays me.”
“No,” Claire said. “No, no, no, no, a thousand times no.”
“I hate you, Claire.”
“Prove it,” she said. “Cut me out of your life forever.”
Pip’s eyes filled with tears.
“You’re all the time busting my balls,” he said. “I’m trying, Claire, I’m really trying.”
“Your hot, salty tears no longer have an effect on my cold, icy heart.”
“They killed Courtenay,” he said. “She was the only one who understood me. She was the only one who ever really loved me.”
“That was awful,” Claire said. “I know you miss her.”
“Knox did it,” he said. “He had her killed to shut her up.”
“He was implicated but not arrested,” Claire said. “Anne Marie’s assistant said Knox conspired with her, but there’s no proof.”
“Where’s Anne Marie now?”
“Back in California,” Claire said.
“But Knox is still around here somewhere,” Pip said. “He owes me.”
“Leave him alone,” Claire said. “People seem to have accidents or drop dead all around that guy.”
Pip got up, and went off down the street. Claire wondered if he would come back that day, but she didn’t bother to ask; he’d just say he would and then not show up. Claire sipped her drink, closed her eyes again, and tried to get back to the deep-thinking place.
“Excuse me, Miss.”
She opened her eyes. It was Laurie.
“Did you procure a permit to put this table out here on the sidewalk?”
“No, but I did sleep with the chief of police last night,” Claire said.
“Well, all right, then,” he said as he sat down, “even with no hanky panky involved I think this is still covered.”
“What could I get with hanky panky?”
“The key to the city,” he said, “and quite possibly a street named after you.”
“I’ll bear that in mind.”
“How’s your head?”
“Better,” she said. “I plan to drink four more of these before my very busy work day ends. I’ve got so much to do, as you can plainly see.”
“How about some lunch?” he asked. “I could go fetch us something to eat out here, all alfresco-like. Très parisien, très déjeuner à l'extérieur.”
“Plan approved,” she said.
He cocked his head to the side and regarded her with a wry smile.
“I’d like a do-over some night this week,” he said. “This time a little less inebriated.”
“Plan denied,” she said.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s get you fed and hydrated and then I’ll try again.”
“Off with you,” she said. “I’ll have sparkling water and the Salad Niçoise, dressing on the side.”
When Laurie returned, with a salad for her and a club sandwich for himself, he spread out their lunch on the table as if he were a waiter, and draped a paper napkin over her lap.
“I hope madam will enjoy her repast,” he said. “Bon appétit.”
“Merci,” she said, and removed her sunglasses.
“Quelle horreur!” he said. “I take back my dinner offer. Je refuse.”
“Your French is decent,” she said, “but it’s cruel to taunt a hung-over person, don’t you know that?”
“I saw the expectant father over here earlier, pestering you,” he said. “I almost arrested him for loitering with the intent to bore you to death.”
“He’s too busy crocheting baby blankets to bother with me,” Claire said.
“Are we entirely convinced it’s actually his impending bundle of joy?”
“The latest information from my confidential sources indicates it is not.”
“Oh well,” he said. “If it hadn’t been the not-so-ex-wife showing up pregnant it would have been something else. Kidnapping, false arrest, amnesia …”
“What do you mean?”
“Why, that you and Monsieur éditorialiste are star-crossed lovers, doomed to stay apart until the third act. You can’t get together now; it’s too soon. Meanwhile, you’re free to waste time with me.”
“He had a big crush on me in high school,” Claire said. “I didn’t know that until I came back this year. If I had stayed in Rose Hill and not run off with King Dipshit to California, Ed and I might be married with a bunch of kids by now.”
“So time-travel, why don’t you? Go back to high school, back old Ed up against a locker, and rock his world. You wouldn’t have stayed with him; he’d have lost you at J-school, where all that rarified hubris lit the righteous fire in his belly. Just think of all the earnest protesting you’d have had to do against anything the slightest bit unfair. Think of all the recycling and volunteering; all those poor people you’d have to care about. It gives me hives just thinking about it.”
“I oughta slug you,” she said.
“Yet you’re smiling.”
“How is it that you can encapsulate all the things that irritate me about Ed, but you completely miss the point of why I’m attracted to him?”
“Enlighten me,” he said. “I’m eager to learn.”
“He’s steady,” she said. “He’d never run off and leave me for some twenty-year-old floozy he met in a bar.”
“Ouch.”
“He’d be loyal and faithful and I could count on him.”
“Sounds more like a dog than a man,” he said. “Tell me this, Claire. Does he make your knees weak when he kisses you?”
“Yes,” she said. “As a matter of fact he does.”
“Still too boring,” he said. “Wouldn’t you rather fight
crime with me?”
“Speaking of which,” she said.
“To change the subject,” he said.
“Did you get my message about Diedre?”
“If you’re going to do my job for me, you should also have to fill out my paperwork.”
“She’s a hoarder,” Claire said. “Every day she scouts out yard sales in the newspaper and then goes from one to the other, buying things.”
“Except her husband says she’s reformed,” he said. “Three years ago he gave her an ultimatum: either stop acquiring things or he was leaving. Not anything as drastic as a divorce, mind you, because their religion precludes that, but he was planning to move back home to live with his parents.”
“I didn’t know that,” Claire said.
“He came in to file the missing person’s report,” Laurie said. “I did ask questions. I’m not completely disinterested in your local domestic disturbances.”
“But the lady out on Hollyhock Ridge said Diedre bought quite a bit of stuff the day she disappeared.”
“So where’s she putting it?”
“Someone else’s garage?” Claire mused. “Not her sister’s; they’re barely speaking.”
“A storage unit,” he said.
“Give me two minutes and I can print out a list of every place within a fifty-mile radius. Care to accompany me?”
“Sure,” he said. “I’ve got nothing better to do.”
“You’re supposed to warn me to stay out of it,” Claire said.
“I’ve only got a few more days in Rose Hill,” he said. “I’d like to spend as much of that time as I can with you.”
They took Laurie’s truck. Claire immediately searched the radio stations until she found a pop music setting.
“How can you stand that drivel?” he asked her.
“Normally, I love it,” she said. “Today it makes my head hurt.”
Laurie changed it to a traditional vocal jazz program on Public Radio and then sang along.
“Who is that?” she asked.
“Rosemary Clooney,” he said. “She also wants me to straighten up and fly right. You women and your demands.”
“Is that the music your dad listened to?”
“No, my dad was a Merle Haggard and George Jones man,” he said. “My mother preferred classical music. I found this all on my own.”
Hollyhock Ridge Page 8
